


a place like home

by mossy_gremlin



Category: Batman - Fandom, DCU
Genre: Dark, Drabble, Other, Personified Cities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29714496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mossy_gremlin/pseuds/mossy_gremlin
Summary: There has never been, nor will there ever be, a city like Gotham.
Kudos: 7





	a place like home

**Author's Note:**

> cw: brief descriptions of childbirth

There has never been, nor will there ever be, a city like Gotham.

For those who know, it hardly need be said. For those who know: Gotham is not a city, it is a being. Gotham breathes. It watches and it yawns its jaws for all ignorant enough to enter unprepared. Gotham is a beast that waits to strike.

Its inhabitants toil within, pacing its streets on their dailies and teeming, like bugs in their thousands in its dirt trodden squares. For some, Gotham is a place of opportunity - dark and grimy, but rich with enterprise. They scrabble and barter and screech, try to claw their way up to what they think they know to be safety in the high ground. They struggle on, thinking there is an end to the darkness, a dominance to be had over the dirt on which they tread. (Little do they know, the city never _ends_. It follows.) These are the ones who never last. They either flail too much, too fast, and are pulled under swiftly by the current, or they wander and wander and become lost and eventually, just maybe, stumble upon a way out.

Which are the lucky ones, none can truly tell.

For others, Gotham is a home. When you have grown up in the belly of a beast, and are suckled and raised and taught in it, loved and hated between its ribs and spines, when you have lived navigating its black veins in the dark – well. It is a monstrous home, but a home nonetheless. Not evil - _monstrous_ , in the basest sense. A place without sense or reason or law, a place where only instinct and violence thrive.

Tonight, Gotham growls in its low, guttural tongue as the horn of a ship engine wails at the docks; it bares its smoky teeth through the smog of the streets. It feeds, thirstily, from the blood spilled on its pavements. Its heart beats in time with the sound of gunshots.

And here, in the belly of the beast, is this:

A woman lies pregnant on a bed, convulsing in the agony of birth. She sweats thinly through her clothes as she struggles to go on, to _heave_ , to push her being forward into something new. She has seen hate and death and pain; she has seen the city in all its glory and revulsion. She has never ventured beyond Gotham's borders. She is its child and although she will never know it, she has been its prey.

Now, she screams and cries and feels the hot tears down her face as she grits her teeth and pushes, one last time. In these final moments, she thinks of what the child's name will be. She thinks of how much she will love them, this little one, when they are warm in her arms; how she will risk death and pain over and over again just to ensure their safety. She makes a vow of protection over her tears.

A hush - then a squalling. A child takes its first breath.

The jaws of the beast snap shut.


End file.
